


let me walk to the top of the big night sky

by lavitanuova



Category: The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types
Genre: Dark Academia, Horror, Multi, Murder Mystery, Religious Cults, Self-Indulgent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:35:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27584857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavitanuova/pseuds/lavitanuova
Summary: In 1984, six nineteen-year-olds at a small New York liberal arts college discover a way to heal the world of all its sins. However, at the end of the summer, those students disperse across America, each carrying with them a dark secret— a secret that will come back to haunt them twelve years later...
Relationships: Amatis Graymark Herondale/Stephen Herondale, Jocelyn Fairchild/Luke Garroway, Jocelyn Fairchild/Valentine Morgenstern, Other Relationship Tags to Be Added
Kudos: 2





	let me walk to the top of the big night sky

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is heavily inspired by Jennifer McMahon's Dismantled and Donna Tartt's The Secret History. The title was taken from First Love, Late Spring by Mitski. All quotations from the Divine Comedy are from the Longfellow translation.

The thing about an imaginary friend is that you're never lonely, or so Clary tells Simon whilst they're hunched over at Clary's dinner table, copying strange words and numbers from a worn leather book.

Simon squints at her. They're eleven, just a bit too old for imaginary friends. "I still think it's weird," he says. "He pointed you to the journal? How did he know it was there in the attic?"

"Sebastian knows everything." She says this with a touch of pride, fiddling with her sweater cuffs. "He says the names and addresses in the book are actually Mom and Luke's old friends from university. If we send them this letter, they'll understand what it means, and then they'll all reunite, which means Mom and Luke will smile again and everything will be fixed."

That makes sense, he thinks. Clary's parents have been weirdly jumpy lately, like there's something that they're trying to hide, though he can't imagine what. He's been friends with Clary for years, and though they're cool and arty compared to his family, they're also very much Parents. The only secret he can imagine them keeping is a surprise birthday party. 

Amatis. Stephen. Jocelyn. Luke. Celine. Valentine.

Simon wonders who they are now. If they're lawyers or bankers or artists, scattered out across the country, as the addresses seem to say. If any of them are rich, if any of them are famous. How would they react to being brought together again? Would it be just like old times, or would something have changed in the past twelve years, something that separated them forever? 

Printing the addresses on the envelopes with his nicest handwriting, Simon can only hope he's doing something good. 

* * *

The wooden door, worn smooth from time, creaks open from the boy's touch. Carefully- more careful than he has ever been, this boy of laugh and fire- he steps inside, leaving the door open behind him. As he does, the carefully printed words on the letter ring in his head:

_ I will be ready to risk my life at any time for the Circle and for the mortal world with whose safety we are charged. _

And a set of coordinates, written underneath, pointing to a small abandoned church in the woods behind the local college.

He doesn't know exactly what it means, but he knows it was addressed to his father. His father who's been dead for years. When the boy speaks of him in his adoptive parents' presence, they flinch and look away from him, telling him he'll find out when he's older. Well, he's older now, twelve already, and what's to stop him finding the story out himself? He hasn't told anyone he's coming here, not even his siblings- the older one would shout at him for even considering it, the younger girl would laugh and forge ahead herself. But this isn't their mission. It's his and his alone.

Making his way through the darkened entranceway by the beam of his fizzling torchlight, the boy wonders what the Circle is. Spies, superheroes, a thousand different things, even a group of vigilante crime-fighters.  _ The mortal world with whose safety we are charged. _ He wouldn't be surprised to know his father was amongst them. The gravel crunches underneath his feet, the only sounds the crickets. It's barely six in the morning, but the dawn is already here. His parents rise early. Perhaps they'll notice, perhaps they'll shout, but when has that ever stopped him? 

He gasps lightly as he steps into the atrium. The stained glass windows are still intact, though covered with moss, sending dim greenish light slanting down on the rotted pews. Statues stare coldly down at him from either side, angels with swords and shields, women with tears running down their cheeks. The cathedral ceiling, vaulted and high, makes it all feel like a cave. Though he'd never admit it, this place is scaring him just a little. The boy clutches his torch tighter as he walks towards the altar, his sneakers scuffed with dirt, and thinks of how his siblings would tease him if he backed out right now. His father, he reminds himself. Would his father have run from a stupid old church? If the letter is to be believed, this was the headquarters of the Circle. If he continues, he'll surely find out more about them.

The altar is, well, an altar, moth-eaten white tablecloth and half-melted candles and such, but it's the book on top that interests him most. A copy of the Holy Bible, dark red and leather-bound, but there are papers stuck inside of it. Secret messages from long ago? A clue about the Circle? He grabs it from the altar, knocking over a candlestick to the ground. It clatters on the stone, sound reverberating through the church, and he tenses before remembering that he's alone here. Replacing it, he opens the heavy book in his hands, flipping randomly through the chapters. In the middle of Paul, a paper flutters out. Thick paper- ripped from a sketchbook. Penciled words in blocky handwriting. He reads it out loud, confused. Is it a bible verse? He's never heard of it before.

_ “Father, much less pain 'twill give us if thou do eat of us;” _

A door slams shut.

The boy freezes.

_ “thyself didst clothe us with this poor flesh, and do thou strip it off.” _

In the dark, Jace Lightwood sees the barest glint of dark eyes.

* * *

VOICE #1

...Luke, Jocelyn, you have to come. Quickly- [STATIC]

VOICE #2

Amatis? Is that you? What happened?

VOICE #1

It's- [THROWING UP] It's Stephen's kid.

VOICE #2

Oh god-

VOICE #1

It's started again, Jocelyn. Twelve years, remember? Twelve years since they- [STATIC] We're meeting at the church in Alicante again. It'll be just like old times. [BITTER LAUGHTER] 

VOICE #2

We're coming. But someone has to look after Clary. We can't lose another kid.

VOICE #1

She can stay with the Lightwood kids, though they're pretty shaken. [STATIC] I think they'll need someone her age. They'll stay out of town. The important thing is to keep them out of danger…

* * *

When Jocelyn remembers the summer of 1984, she remembers not the dirt and blood on her wearied hands but careening down the coast of New York, wind in her hair and her boyfriend at her side. The sky was prussian azure, cloudless and perfect, mirrored, with the lightest ripples, in the sea. There was a Stevie Wonder song on the radio, Amatis chain-smoking and chattering with Luke, Celine laughing loudly at something Stephen said, and the sounds of the seagulls and the waves in the distance. At the end of the road there was their church, their tiny second home, hidden and ivy-covered, where nothing bad could ever happen, and when they got tired they'd just pile in the convertible and ride back to the dusty Alicante libraries, where they'd sprawl in their armchairs and recite poetry to each other till late. Jocelyn looked around at them, her little family of six, and in her mind she vowed she'd never leave them. Why would she? Together they would change the world, tear it down and reshape it in their image, to something brighter and freer and better.

They were nineteen and invulnerable, nineteen and indestructible, and the end of the summer seemed so far away.

Later, when she knelt over the grave of the man she thought she'd spend her life with, she'd tried to pinpoint a time when everything went wrong. A clean break, a separation between the breezy joy of early June and the things that had happened in the past few days. But what she didn't realise at nineteen- what she didn't want to realise- is that the whole thing was poisoned from the start. That, perhaps, when she had first begun to trust Valentine Morgenstern, she had set off a chain of events that she wouldn't see the true consequences of until twelve years later. 

Jocelyn sets down the phone and wonders how she'll tell her family about this. 


End file.
